JEWISH JIBE AT BBC NICK SPARKS ROW
SCOTTISH Labour has been plunged into a fresh row on anti-Semitism after a candidate shared comments about a senior BBC journalist’s Jewish heritage.
Jean Anne Mitchell, who is standing in West Dunbartonshire, forwarded details about Nick Robinson’s Jewishness after he chaired a debate involving Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn apologised recently for the anti-Semitism row that has dogged his party over the last two years.
The controversy became a major part of the election campaign after Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis rubbished claims Corbyn is tackling anti-Semitism as a “mendacious fiction”.
Scottish Labour then dropped its candidate in Falkirk, Safia Ali, over allegedly antiSemitic posts on an old Facebook account.
But Mitchell, who is contesting a seat won by the SNP’s Martin DochertyHughes in 2017, is now under pressure over a recent message posted in a candidates’ WhatsApp group.
The comments came after last week’s BBC debate between Boris Johnson and Corbyn, who was challenged on anti-Semitism.
The head-to-head was hosted by Robinson, who was the BBC’s political editor and is now the presenter of the corporation’s flagship Today programme.
Mitchell shared comments with the group that had been made by an unnamed individual.
The post stated: “We watched the BBC Leadership Debate chaired by Nick Robinson. Throughout the debate, we felt that Robinson gave Johnson an easy time, allowing him to avoid answering the audience’s questions and instead giving him
BY PAUL HUTCHEON free rein to attack Corbyn. We thought he was biased. And then we Googled him.”
The WhatsApp message quoted excerpts from the Google search: “His mother was born in Shanghai, where her German-Jewish parents fled during the 1930s.”
The post continued: “That makes him Jewish.”
It also flagged up the fact that Robinson was a Young Conservative before his media career. It ended sarcastically: “So not at all biased then.”
Mitchell then posted one minute later: “Above message from my friends in London.”
In a newspaper story in 2013, Robinson described himself as a “Jew by birth” who was raised in the Church of England and is “now an agnostic”.
Mitchell told the Record she shared the message “for information purposes, nothing more” and was “absolutely” not endorsing it. She added: “I’ve got so many Jewish friends and I would never, ever, ever to do anything that was in any way anti-Semitic.”
After being read the section on Robinson’s Jewish heritage, she said: “I did not read that message properly. I was tired, I’d been out campaigning all day. I came in, watched the debate and shared that with the group because it was to do with the programme.”
She added: “I’m really troubled that someone in a candidate group has actually let that be shared outwith the group. That is really pretty alarming.”
A Scottish Tories spokesman said: “This message is utterly inappropriate and clearly antiSemitic. Labour should remove its support for her candidacy.”